Loudspeakers

Back in 1974, Yamaha released the NS-1000 loudspeaker. A purple period for the company, it seemed to be launching an endless stream of great products. These effectively put Yamaha on the map as a serious hi-fi manufacturer, capable of innovation, superb quality and outperforming its rivals.

Acoustic Energy made a great name for itself back in the late eighties and has gone from strength to strength ever since. Following a recent management buy out, the Gloustershire-based company has a renewed sense of momentum with various new speaker designs – several of which I have sampled – including the AE109 (HFC 425), a highly capable entry-level floorstander from its 100 Series.

The powered speaker market – where a stereo amplifier is built into one of the loudspeakers – has become an increasingly popular area with those seeking desktop music systems. US brand Klipsch is embracing the versatile sector, and the R-41PM is a small powered design that’s closely related to its R-41M passive loudspeaker.

You certainly can’t accuse Sonos of resting on its laurels. The company already dominates the multi-room audio market with its Play range of speakers, and it moved quickly to introduce the new Sonos One (HFC 433) last year, adding support for Amazon’s Alexa voice technology, and pitching it as the “smart speaker for audiophiles”. Now, barely six months later, it’s introducing the Beam, which brings Alexa smart tech to the company’s range of television soundbars for the first time.

When Monitor Audio first unveiled its Studio standmount loudspeaker at the Bristol Show in February, I was genuinely intrigued. Unlike pretty much everything else in the company’s extensive loudspeaker lineup, it doesn’t belong to a wider range of products but is instead a design that, for now at least, exists entirely on its own. It has no claims to multi-channel use or smart home integration and it surprised visitors to the show by debuting early, having been planned to launch at the Munich High End Show in May,but instead beingready in time to be on display at Bristol.

There is a school of thought among some loudspeaker buyers that standmount designs are a bit of a waste of time. To be clear, this is not referring to those small speakers mounted on wall brackets or tucked away on a shelf, but rather those that are positioned in their own space on the floor atop a pair of stands.